1/Got a bunch of #wagegap deniers in my mentions so here’s a thread about reductive thinking about women’s “choices”:
2/The wage gap results from complex dynamics that create the parameters of women’s decisions about work. Men and women *do* make different choices, ie, fields of study, types of work, “lifestyle” decisions but rarely women-make-choicers actually delve into *why* they make them.
3/ Women’s choices are made in the context of dominant gender socialization, entrenched educational biases, a lack of social support for women’s wage earning, and the mandate that women provide unpaid care and domestic labor.
4/The gap, and women’s choices, experts know, are due to a sex-segregated occupational labor force, the persistent devaluation of “women’s work”, and good old-fashioned bias and discrimination. Here’s a good 2017 overview: aeaweb.org/articles?id=10…
5/ The wage gap is racialized, indicating its systemic and intersectional nature. In each ethnic/racial category measured men make more than women Asian and white women’s > black and Hispanic women and also generally > than black and Hispanic men. pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2016…
6/ Women may “chose” to work part-time, walking away from tenure, benefits and wealth escalators, but they do so mainly because we don’t support working parents and because we expect women to be our unpaid default care workers.
7/ Women aren’t “choosing” they are coping. 32% of mothers say they want to work full-time but can't. 66% of caregivers to the elderly are women who spend 50% more time providing care than men.
8/ Devaluation of care – for children, families and the elderly – keeps wages for jobs women do, ie. domestic and healthcare work, low. There is no equal pay for comparable work. Parking lot attendants (86% men) make more, for example, than childcare workers (97% women.)
9/ Women don’t “choose” to be penalized economically for being mothers, they are punished because as a society we chose not to support their paid labor. The US is the only industrialized nation and one of the only in the world that does not guarantee workers paid family leave.
10/ A woman doesn’t “choose” to have her wages go down roughly 11% for every child she has, just like she doesn’t “choose” for men’s wages to go up in the same circumstances. The motherhood penalty and fatherhood bonus are facts. thirdway.org/report/the-fat…
11/ Women don’t “choose” to work in lower-wage fields when, as children, they are socialized into “nurture” sector extensions of mothering: nursing, teaching, administration, hospitality, etc. They also don’t choose to be harassed out of higher wage “men’s jobs.”
12/ As a society, we prioritize men’s income earning. When men enter a field, wages go up. When women do, wages go down. The median pay in male-dominated sectors is 21% higher than pay in fields where women are the majority. nytimes.com/2016/03/20/ups…
13/ Because we do everything to inhibit women’s parity workforce presence and seniority, American women’s workplace participation is declining, whereas in peer countries women’s participation continues to grow. Individual women aren’t “choosing” to create this debacle: 
14/ If American women participated in the workforce at the same rate as women from, say, Norway, our economy would be $1.6 trillion larger today. usnews.com/news/best-coun…
15/ And, yes, women have a harder time negotiating higher wages, but that’s not because we are born this way. It’s because we punish girls and women for asking for more for themselves. Immodesty and asking for money are seen “inappropriate” and “selfish” in women.
16/ Women’s aren’t “choosing” to be punished for violating gender norms. Telling women to “negotiate like men” means a **higher** likelihood not that they will be paid more but that they will be considered selfish and unlikeable doublexeconomy.com/2015/04/14/why…
17/ Women understand their "choices" well and being paid less isn't one that any woman makes happily or willingly. Fin.
- sending your way because we're both being incessantly tagged, lol.
